Obamacare

[DarkLink]

I've heard a lot of people questioning why Obamacare is so controversial in America. After all, free healthcare for everyone is a good thing, right?

The problem with Obamacare is pretty simply explained:

America has just about the best healthcare technologies and physicians in the worlds. It's just very expensive. America already spends twice as much per GDP as any other nation does on healthcare, and we are only ranked 37th in the world. People who don't have healthcare don't have it because they cannot afford it.


Obamacare does little to address this issue. Obamacare is essentially a big tax increase, forcing us to spend even more money on healthcare, yet it does relatively little to change how healthcare actually works. Proponents point out that some people will get subsidies to help pay, but the hundreds of billions of dollars Obamacare will cost has to come from somewhere*. Obamacare is basically just throwing more money at the problem, when we're already throwing more money at it than anyone else in the world.


There are some good things about Obamacare. It formalizes the ability to keep young people on their parent's healthcare plan until age 26, something very important right now as youth cannot get jobs and cannot afford their own healthcare. It places some restrictions on insurance companies denying healthcare due to pre-existing conditions. There are a number of similar, specific items within Obamacare that are widely popular.

On the other hand, under Obamacare it suddenly becomes cheaper for many companies to actually completely drop existing employee healthcare plans and simply take the tax hike, because many small businesses cannot afford the increased costs of healthcare.

Obamacare isn't controversial because we dislike widespread healthcare. It's controversial because we want healthcare to be cheaper and more affordable, allowing more people to get healthcare while reducing the burden healthcare places on the economy. This is the exact opposite of what Obamacare does.


I hope that helps explain to you foreigners why we Americans want poor people to die from common diseases;).



*I'm not sure if anyone can figure out what it will actually cost, since politicians are always all over the map about stuff like that, but given Obama's record I'd absolutely put my money on the high end estimates in the billions of dollars.

[DrLove42]

Well reasoned. How much do you spend on health insurance a year? Just as a qiestion.

Obviously coming from a country that offers full free healthcare i advocate the system enitrely

[DarkLink]

Something like 2.2 trillion dollars, or about 15-17% of our GDP, according to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_(PPP )_per_capita

It depends a little on the year, the metric, and which organization is crunching the numbers.

We also have significant issues with Medicare and Social Security, our two other big entitlement programs. Both of those have a similar problem in that we have a lot of baby boomers about to retire and start relying on benefits to be paid by a much smaller group of people making less and less money. Costs are spiraling up, while the money available to go into the system is decreasing. Many retired folks require Medicare and Social Security to make ends meet, and those systems are both headed for disaster unless we address our debt issues.

Meanwhile, Congress is ignoring critical issues like these. Congress currently has the lowest recorded approval rating in history (10%). That's both parties sitting around doing nothing.

Ironically, right now Romney and Ryan have made big gains against Obama on these issues. Romney and Ryan both have a history of supporting healthcare legislation, and have taken the position of overhauling healthcare in an affordable fashion. It's funny that Republicans have made such big gains against Democrats on healthcare issues.


Edit: And apparently, our healthcare costs have been growing 2% faster than our economy. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/spending-more-doesnt-make-us-healthier/

[DrLove42]

Aging population is a ***** of a problem, one thats only gettng worse. Hence why retirement age here keeps climbing.

On health insurance i mean on a individual level. Do you provide ypur own? Or is it something a lot of companies offer? And if its something a job offers, is the wage earnt lower than expected to include it?

And is it typically all inclusive if you need a treatment? Or do you have some kind of excess, like you would on a insurance policy for possessions?

[wittdooley]

We pay around 220 a month for two adults. As to what it covers...we still have co-pays on everything. Some examples: $20 per doc visit. $15 for all prescriptions. $100 for emergency room. That's just a start.

[ElectricPaladin]

DarkLink is correct in many ways. However, there are a couple of things that, in my opinion, he is leaving out of his description of Obamacare.

The biggest - and, in my opinion, most important - of those things is the truly massive number of uninsured Americans who will be covered by Obamacare. Those young people who are having a hard time getting their first job? There's a lot of people like that. People who can't get affordable health insurance because of pre-existing conditions? There are quite a lot of them, too. Poor people who aren't quite poor enough for Medicare? Tons of them. Women who need drugs related to their lady-bits that their insurance won't cover anymore because of certain conservative political victories? Lots of them, too. These are all problems that Obamacare solves.

Does Obamacare cost me money? Basically, yes. Taxes and fees paid by employers and healthcare providers will be passed along to me. Additionally, some of the taxes that come out of my pay check will also go to fund Obamacare's mandates. However, I believe that it's worth it so that young people children, the sick and injured, the poor, and women can get the healthcare coverage that they need and deserve.

The other thing I think DarkLink is failing to note is that Obamacare is a compromise between the American Left, which generally prefers a system of universal healthcare that more closely resembles that of Canada and the UK, and the American Right. Now, DarkLink has said that he isn't against widespread healthcare for its own sake - and I have no reason not to believe him - but the American Right openly campaigns against universal healthcare for just that reason. You only need to listen to a few speeches or watch a few anti-Obama commercials to hear a lot of rhetoric about how Obama is giving "your money" to "the poor" and how Obama is "against success." While DarkLink may well support universal healthcare, it's important to understand that the context of Obamacare is a compromise between those who support universal healthcare and those who actively oppose it.

In conclusion, I agree that Obamacare is flawed. However, I think that in the current American political situation, it's the best solution we are likely to see to a problem that kills and impoverishes many, many Americans every year.

[DarkLink]

My complaint with that is, with the economy like it is can we afford to take hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy for an important, but ultimately non-essential, program? I'm pretty sure there's a lot that can be done to make healthcare more affordable (and thus allowing many of those uninsured to afford it) without costing nearly that much, and then those billions can stay in the economy to keep people employed.


Aging population is a ***** of a problem, one thats only gettng worse. Hence why retirement age here keeps climbing.

Same in America.



On health insurance i mean on a individual level. Do you provide ypur own? Or is it something a lot of companies offer? And if its something a job offers, is the wage earnt lower than expected to include it?

And is it typically all inclusive if you need a treatment? Or do you have some kind of excess, like you would on a insurance policy for possessions?

Healthcare is very common. Most everyone with a "real" job has it, most career employment offers it as a benefit. The private sector tends to offer higher wages and fewer benefits, while the public sector has more benefits and lower wages, but overall most people get a better deal out of the private sector unless you have a serious medical condition like MS or something that requires regular, expensive medication.

I'm not really an expert, though. There's a very wide range of options so personal healthcare can vary greatly from person to person depending on their needs and what they can afford.

We also have programs like Medicaid and Medicare, so some aspects of healthcare are covered there.

It's a pretty complex mess, and since I've not had to worry about getting my own policies yet I don't know a huge amount about the different options. I will say, however, that my family is not particularly rich (we're in the underpaid government employee category), and we've been able to afford healthcare that's covered everything from a kidney stone to a broken leg without hiccups.

[Wildeybeast]

Obamacare isn't controversial because we dislike widespread healthcare. It's controversial because we want healthcare to be cheaper and more affordable, allowing more people to get healthcare while reducing the burden healthcare places on the economy.


Every country wants that, but unless you start placing restrictions on how much drug companies and medical equipment manufacturers can charge, or you start paying your healthcare workers in potatoes, it isn't going to happen in a capitalist society. Especially in America where I'm fairly sure the major drug companies will be significant contributors to Presidential campaigns. You could massively cut your defence spending by not starting pointless, unwinnable wars, which would allow for greater spending on healthcare without a tax hike, but I'm guessing no party/candidate would dare to suggest that right?

I'm still not entirely clear exactly what Obamacare is trying to do. Put simply, is it the state providing free healthcare for the poorest people?

[ElectricPaladin]

I'm still not entirely clear exactly what Obamacare is trying to do. Put simply, is it the state providing free healthcare for the poorest people?


Yes. The poorest people will get free healthcare. The less poor will get highly subsidized healthcare.

[DarkLink]

I'm not exactly sure what Obamacare is trying to do, either. That's part of the problem. It's a massive, complex law, and the costs and effects are impossible for the average person to determine without getting a degree in economics and spending a few weeks crunching numbers.

If you google "Obamacare", you can find bullet point summaries with generic things like "make it easier for people with preexisting conditions to get coverage", but that really doesn't tell you all that much.

The difficulty in understanding the law only fuels the controversy. Both sides have arguments for why it's good or bad, and you can't really prove either argument.

One other big complaint with Obamacare is that Obama shoved it through congress before anyone really understood anything about it. We practically woke up one day and Obama said "here's your new healthcare plan, have fun".




The only thing you can easily say for certain about Obamacare is that A) more people will get healthcare, and B) it is extremely expensive.

[ElectricPaladin]

The only thing you can easily say for certain about Obamacare is that A) more people will get healthcare, and B) it is extremely expensive.


As a supporter of Obamacare, I have to say that I would put it similarly. Obamacare will get healthcare to more people, and it will cost us money. I'm not sure I'd say "extremely," but see above re: my pro-Obamacare bias. Obamacare is also quite complex - because it's a compromise between several contradictory points of view - and will roll out slowly over the next few years, so it's hard to say beyond those two points what the ultimate consequences will be.

[Kyban]

It's apparently easy to overlook the fact that current healthcare is extremely expensive as well, or do you mean for the country? If it's any consolation the government will make all that back judging by healthcare company profits.

[DarkLink]

It's hard to tell exactly how much it costs, but currently we spend about 2.5 trillion on healthcare. Obamacare is roughly another .5 trillion on top of that, a 16% increase, though again the law is so complex it's hard to tell how much it will cost. 0.5 trillion dollars is about 3% of our national GDP. That's extremely expensive no matter how you look at it, and again, my problem with it is that we do not have that sort of money right now.

[Capt Forsythe]

This is a fairly reasonable discourse. But please stop insinuating that The Affordable Health Care Act is some sort of large tax increase.

Do you make over 200,000$ as an individual or 250,000$ with a spouse? Ok, you're free to complain about your 0.9% medicare surtax and the 3.8% surtax on investment income. Certain tax increases will be passed on to everyone though, like the 2.3% excise tax on medical equipment. So are there tax increases, yes. How does it stack up to other tax reforms? Let's find out:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/07/Obamacare-tax-chart.jpg

Oh man, not even close. Even the conservative superstar Ronald Regan raised taxes more than The Affordable Health Care Act. Huh.

Here is another odd factoid that I wont give exact numbers on, if you want, I will find the figures, but right now I am just making a point: ~56% of people oppose the health care reform, but when asked about the major individual provisions of the act, ~70% on average viewed the provisions favorably. Interesting, I wonder if misinformation from media has contributed to an unfavorable view of act.

In my opinion, the act's failure was the removal of the language preventing the abitrary increase of premiums by insurers and not offering an alternative public option.

I wonder who killed those two items in the bill.....

[ElectricPaladin]

This is a fairly reasonable discourse. But please stop insinuating that The Affordable Health Care Act is some sort of large tax increase.

Do you make over 200,000$ as an individual or 250,000$ with a spouse? Ok, you're free to complain about your 0.9% medicare surtax and the 3.8% surtax on investment income. Certain tax increases will be passed on to everyone though, like the 2.3% excise tax on medical equipment. So are there tax increases, yes. How does it stack up to other tax reforms? Let's find out:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/07/Obamacare-tax-chart.jpg

Oh man, not even close. Even the conservative superstar Ronald Regan raised taxes more than The Affordable Health Care Act. Huh.

Here is another odd factoid that I wont give exact numbers on, if you want, I will find the figures, but right now I am just making a point: ~56% of people oppose the health care reform, but when asked about the major individual provisions of the act, ~70% on average viewed the provisions favorably. Interesting, I wonder if misinformation from media has contributed to an unfavorable view of act.


Thanks for clearing that up. I was pretty sure the expense to the average American was being exaggerated here, but I didn't have any figures.

[wittdooley]

It should be noted that one of the main components of Obamacare, the pre-existing condition portion, wouldn't be opposed by many on the right if it weren't for the major clause that everyone wants to leave out: it seeks to remove risk based assessment from nearly ALL insurance practices.

The last time the Government decided that we should forget about risk in our economy, it was in regards to the housing market. Banks were encouraged (nay, almost forced) to lend to VERY HIGH RISK borrowers that effectively couldn't afford their loans if they got a flat tire. And we all know how THAT ended up. Forget the fact that they're trying to do it again...

But I digress. The fact remains that risk assessment is important to insurance companies, and Obamacare opens the door to remove risk not just from Health insurance, but also from Car Insurance, Homeowners Insurance, etc. So, effectively, it is going to raise premiums for everyone so that the the status quo is maintained for those with the most risk. That means that dude with the 3 DUIs, if he still has license (and it's the US, so he probably will) will be paying the same insurance premiums as the girl with the spotless driving record.

Further, it removes any incentive for people to get healthier to decrease what they're paying. We're already a big old fat nation. Fit patients cost less for both themselves and the insurance companies. If we remove any of this risk from how insurance is determined, and everyone is paying the same amount, there is no benefit (beside personal health, which is for many less of a motivator than money) to become more fit.

Just another point that gets lost in the morass that is Obamacare.

For posterities sake, it's worth noting that Ezra Klein is a fairly hardcore liberal blogger. He had particulalry heated words directed towards Liberman's stance on health care and now Paul Ryan's proposed spending cuts, effectively stating that "[Republicans'] stances are aimed to ensure that the poor and ignorant die sooner than the financially stable and well-educated."

[Wildeybeast]

As a supporter of Obamacare, I have to say that I would put it similarly. Obamacare will get healthcare to more people, and it will cost us money. I'm not sure I'd say "extremely," but see above re: my pro-Obamacare bias. Obamacare is also quite complex - because it's a compromise between several contradictory points of view - and will roll out slowly over the next few years, so it's hard to say beyond those two points what the ultimate consequences will be.

So, do people in America think that, if Obamacare works and gives the poorest free healthcare, it is a good thing? Over here the current government raised the lowest tax threshold so more of the poorest pay no tax, whilst increasing the amount the richest pay. This was almost universally declared as a good thing (apart from the cack handed way they implemented the tax rise for the richest). It could be that the massive cuts in public spending mean there is still a lot of resentment towards the wealthiest, but I think it would be fair to say this represents the general view of our society that we have an obligation to look after those at the bottom, even when a number of them are lazy parasitic scum. Do Americans have the same attitude to looking after your poor?

[DarkLink]

This is a fairly reasonable discourse. But please stop insinuating that The Affordable Health Care Act is some sort of large tax increase.

One of the things to come out of the Supreme Court ruling was that, yes, Obamacare is a tax as opposed to whatever 'mandate' bull Obama was going on about.

And billions of dollars have to come from somewhere.



Oh man, not even close. Even the conservative superstar Ronald Regan raised taxes more than The Affordable Health Care Act. Huh.

Regan looked at the economy, and the situation that he presided over, and decided that a tax increase was appropriate. How rational of him. It was an appropriate move at the time.

Right now, most people are struggling with low wages, poor jobs, unemployment, and massive debt. A tax increase is the last thing the economy needs right now.

Funny how situations change over time. Maybe if the economy hadn't crashed and failed to recover over the last five or six years, then Obamacare would be perfectly affordable.





Incidentally, according to factcheck.org, just the penalty for not having healthcare will net the government about 6 billion dollars. That's only the people who choose to take the penalty rather than get healthcare, and that's not an insignificant number.

According to Forbes:
As wittdooley mentioned, premiums will almost certainly go up. This makes health insurance, as a whole, less affordable, the exact opposite of what one would want this law to accomplish.

Obamacare increases taxes on medical devices. This makes expensive medical equipment even more expensive, making healthcare less affordable, the exact opposite of what we want.

Obamacare would force state Medicaid to expand, taking an already expensive set of plans designed only to cover unemployed and disabled and turning it into a much larger, much more expensive program. This was the one real part of the law struck down by the Supreme Court.

Obamacare undermines employee healthcare benefits. Healthcare will become both less affordable to businesses, and the tax penalty will be a cheaper alternative. Many employers will simply drop employee health benefits. Some of the cost savings might lead to a small increase in wages, but that is more than offset by employees needing to purchase their own, less affordable, healthcare.

The government will provide subsidies for people who can't afford healthcare. That's all well and good, except we are already in massive, massive debt. The government doesn't have money to be handing out to whomever it pleases.

There are various taxes on rich people, but I don't really care that much because they're among the few who can actually afford it. But, even if they can afford it, sucking money out of the economy inhibits investments, business growth, and job growth, so it's still probably not a good thing.


So, yes, Obamacare is a tax, and when you add all of the little things up it's a pretty big one. The 0.9% direct tax increase is only one small part of the overall cost to the public.



Again, if we were in a stable economic position, maybe this would be affordable. But right now, our economy is stagnant, and has been for a long time. Unemployment among 16-24 year olds is almost as high as it is in the third world countries in the Middle East. We need to be fixing our economy, not trying to force a likely unaffordable healthcare system to top off our other, soon to also be unaffordable, entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

That's not to say there are good parts to the plan, but that doesn't change the terrible economic timing.


Edit:
Also, one of the problems with healthcare expenses is precisely that the government pays for some of it. Some companies (who effectively have a monopoly) intentionally charge more than essentially any individual could afford for rare drugs, because they know that they can get the government to subsidize those people and pay those outrageous prices. So rather than bringing prices down, poorly implemented healthcare policy can cause prices to spiral upwards. As far as I know, Obamacare doesn't adequately address this aspect of the problem.

[wittdooley]

So, do people in America think that, if Obamacare works and gives the poorest free healthcare, it is a good thing? Over here the current government raised the lowest tax threshold so more of the poorest pay no tax, whilst increasing the amount the richest pay. This was almost universally declared as a good thing (apart from the cack handed way they implemented the tax rise for the richest). It could be that the massive cuts in public spending mean there is still a lot of resentment towards the wealthiest, but I think it would be fair to say this represents the general view of our society that we have an obligation to look after those at the bottom, even when a number of them are lazy parasitic scum. Do Americans have the same attitude to looking after your poor?

Personally, I do not. But bear in mind, our "poor" already have more space where they live than most of the British Middle Class and live better than every "impoverished" class in the world. Bear in mind that the "poor" in our country already get: free or subvented cable; free or subvented cell phones; food stamps/WIC vouchers that allow them to get, more or less, whatever they want, including brand name food, cigarettes, and alcohol.

I'm not opposed to benefits for the "poor," but in a country where we already have something like 40% of the population NOT paying taxes, regardless of how small the increase is, I don't want to pay for ANOTHER benefits package for the poor.

Here's a look at how our poor treat handouts: I typically volunteer at a Foodbank in our community during the holidays. Because I'm a big, muscular dude, my work usually consists of moving pallates or turkeys or sacks of potatoes. This year was the first year I'd worked on the floor with the folks receiving their bags of FREE food. I'd estimate three out of every five people that came in to get their Thankgiving meal complained that either A) they were getting a chicken instead of a turkey, or B) their turkey wasn't big enough. I'll reiterate that this was FREE food. Now, there were plenty of folks that were legitimately grateful, but 60% of them were complaining that their FREE food wasn't enough. I have a lot of trouble with that. As a result, I don't know that I'll go back to volunteer.

Now, I realize that is just a microcosm of the larger picture, and that there are plenty of instances of the temporary poor or the disable poor that legitimately need help, but in the United States we have a fairly large "career poor" demographic that abuse the system and have a ridiculous sense of entitlement.

I think you'll find that many of the people that are opposed to Obamacare are opposed to it because of reasons like that. I vote for school levies. I'm not opposed to tax increases that benefit kids or hard working people. But I am opposed to allowing these "career poor" to milk our system more than they already do.

And here's my big problem: The media in this country villianizes those that have opinions that are less socialistic in nature. Some examples:

1. In 2008, there was a large contingent in the media that were claiming that, if you didn't vote for Obama, "You were a racist."

2. Presently, there's pleny of media fervor stating that, if you still eat at Chik-Fil-A "You're a homophobe."

3. And now, hard working people that bust their *** to get where they are in the financial or business sectors, "Make too much money" and should be capped on their earnings. What's interesting about this last point is that you NEVER hear detractors make the same claims regarding professional athletes (an area where there are a lot more opportunities for minorities to be overpaid). And yes, I understand that LeBron James brings in a TON of money for Nike and McDonalds. Do you know what he doesn't do? He doesn't run a company that employs 60,000 people. CEOs of Banks and big businessess do. So why don't we hear any outcry about LeBron making too much?

EDIT: The reason the LBJ/Big Business analogy is important is because the more we tax businesses, the less room they have for job growth. LeBron doesn't employ anyone. Every dollar he's responsible for goes to him. Every Dollar John Stumpf helps to steer towards Wells Fargo eventually filters down to the 264,000 people working for him and keeps them employed. The importance of that shouldn't be overlooked.

[Wildeybeast]

we have very similar issues here with 'career poor' and with people earning 'too much'. Mainly it's aimed at bankers at the moment. We always moan about footballers getting paid far too much money, but everyone still pays for their season tickets, satellite TV and the replica kits every year.

[DarkLink]

Wittdooley also has an excellent point on taxes buried in his last comment.

Most 'rich' people (1%ers or whatever you want to call them) are percieved as paying lower taxes than people below them. In reality, it's more complicated than that.

These rich people have most of their wealth tied up in investments. Bill Gates might be worth forty or fifty billion on paper, but he couldn't write a check for that amount at this exact instant because most of that worth is tied up in investments. That's another way of saying that he's donated a significant amount of money to various companies to allow them to expand their businesses, employ more people, and produce better products. That company 'owes' him however much money he's invested in them, and that investment grows as the company does. Taxes associated with this sort of thing are lower than direct income taxes, in order to promote investment and encourage economic growth. That's a good thing.

Now, that's likely a huge oversimplification, but that's at least a ballpark explanation of the basic idea.

I'm not going to say that CEOs are always reasonably paid, but much of the Occupy Wall Street type protests are based on a lack of understanding of why these people are rich, and what they do with that money.




And it's actually over 50% of the nation that doesn't pay federal income taxes, I believe. And while you can complain about the 1% paying lower tax rates, that same 1% also pays for something like 50% of all taxes in America. That's a pretty stark contrast.

[ElectricPaladin]

America is currently embroiled in something of a culture war over the degree of poverty we are wiling to tolerate in our lower class and the degree of wealth we are willing to tolerate in our upper class. What does "America" want? Great question. We'll get back to you when we figure it out.

Personally, I think that the situation of America's poor is intolerable. I work as a middle school teacher in Oakland, CA - one of America's extremely poor communities - and I could tell you tales that would harrow up thy soul. However, I am not the only American, and there are many who disagree with me. Some don't believe that things are as bad as I see them. Some agree that the situation is unacceptable, but they have different ideas about how to fix it. Some accept that the problem is bad, but think that the poor don't deserve redistribution of wealth, or that the right of the wealthy to their money supersedes the needs of the poor.

In America, it's a complex issue. We can't really get away with "let's raise taxes to make life better for the poor" without enormous controversy.

[Capt Forsythe]

One of the things to come out of the Supreme Court ruling was that, yes, Obamacare is a tax as opposed to whatever 'mandate' bull Obama was going on about.

And billions of dollars have to come from somewhere.

Regan looked at the economy, and the situation that he presided over, and decided that a tax increase was appropriate. How rational of him. It was an appropriate move at the time.

Right now, most people are struggling with low wages, poor jobs, unemployment, and massive debt. A tax increase is the last thing the economy needs right now.

Funny how situations change over time. Maybe if the economy hadn't crashed and failed to recover over the last five or six years, then Obamacare would be perfectly affordable.

Incidentally, according to factcheck.org, just the penalty for not having healthcare will net the government about 6 billion dollars. That's only the people who choose to take the penalty rather than get healthcare, and that's not an insignificant number.

According to Forbes:
As wittdooley mentioned, premiums will almost certainly go up. This makes health insurance, as a whole, less affordable, the exact opposite of what one would want this law to accomplish.

Obamacare increases taxes on medical devices. This makes expensive medical equipment even more expensive, making healthcare less affordable, the exact opposite of what we want.

Obamacare would force state Medicaid to expand, taking an already expensive set of plans designed only to cover unemployed and disabled and turning it into a much larger, much more expensive program. This was the one real part of the law struck down by the Supreme Court.

Obamacare undermines employee healthcare benefits. Healthcare will become both less affordable to businesses, and the tax penalty will be a cheaper alternative. Many employers will simply drop employee health benefits. Some of the cost savings might lead to a small increase in wages, but that is more than offset by employees needing to purchase their own, less affordable, healthcare.

The government will provide subsidies for people who can't afford healthcare. That's all well and good, except we are already in massive, massive debt. The government doesn't have money to be handing out to whomever it pleases.

There are various taxes on rich people, but I don't really care that much because they're among the few who can actually afford it. But, even if they can afford it, sucking money out of the economy inhibits investments, business growth, and job growth, so it's still probably not a good thing.


So, yes, Obamacare is a tax, and when you add all of the little things up it's a pretty big one. The 0.9% direct tax increase is only one small part of the overall cost to the public.



Again, if we were in a stable economic position, maybe this would be affordable. But right now, our economy is stagnant, and has been for a long time. Unemployment among 16-24 year olds is almost as high as it is in the third world countries in the Middle East. We need to be fixing our economy, not trying to force a likely unaffordable healthcare system to top off our other, soon to also be unaffordable, entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

That's not to say there are good parts to the plan, but that doesn't change the terrible economic timing.

Edit:
Also, one of the problems with healthcare expenses is precisely that the government pays for some of it. Some companies (who effectively have a monopoly) intentionally charge more than essentially any individual could afford for rare drugs, because they know that they can get the government to subsidize those people and pay those outrageous prices. So rather than bringing prices down, poorly implemented healthcare policy can cause prices to spiral upwards. As far as I know, Obamacare doesn't adequately address this aspect of the problem.

How would any of what you claim (which is not accurate, but sounds more like Fox News talking points) not have been remedied by regulation on premiums to insurers and an affordable public option? Which is exactly what I claimed was the problem in my original post. Both of those pieces of the bill were defeated by senate finace committee head Max Baucus and other equally blue dog democrats when they defeated the Rockafeller and Schmuer amendments in committee. Hmm... lets take a look at his top donors for 2005-2009:

1. Schering-Plough Corp (pharmeceuticals)
2. Amgen (Biotech)
3. Bluecross/shield (Health Insurance)
4. UST (alcohol/tobacco)
5. New York Life (health/life insurance)
6. Chase (bank/insurance)
7. AIG (Insurance)
8. Aetna (Health insurance)
9. Goldman Sachs (fin. services)
10. DaVita (healthcare)

That sure is a considerable amount of his top donors in the health industry/insurance industry. Shocking that his committee would strike down the amendments that would create competition for the health care giants and help keep costs on the individual down.

There are also exemptions for those unable to afford the penalty, so that isn't a huge issue, also, the IRS' hands are tied in collecting the penalty:

"The law prohibits the IRS from seeking to put anybody in jail or seizing their property for simple refusal to pay the tax. The law says specifically that taxpayers “shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty” for failure to pay, and also that the IRS cannot file a tax lien (a legal claim against such things as homes, cars, wages and bank accounts) or a “levy” (seizure of property or bank accounts).

The law says that the IRS will collect the tax “in the same manner as an assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68” of the tax code. That part of the tax code provides for imposing an additional penalty “equal to the total amount of the tax evaded, or not collected.” It also requires written notices to the taxpayer, and provides for court proceedings.

So it may turn out that the IRS will be suing those who fail to pay the tax for double the amount. But so far, the IRS has not spelled out exactly how it will enforce the new penalty with the limited power the law gives it."

[Chronowraith]

One of the things to come out of the Supreme Court ruling was that, yes, Obamacare is a tax as opposed to whatever 'mandate' bull Obama was going on about.

And billions of dollars have to come from somewhere.

You do realize that only one part (albeit an important part) of the Affordable Healthcare Act was ruled to be a tax?

The Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate (again, a small yet critical part of the whole act) as a tax. It's right here (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf), see page 3 where it specifically refers to the mandate as being a tax.

Also, you can't use the forced expansion as an example of how the Affordable Healthcare Act would cause excess government expenditures and in the next sentence state that it was struck down. Essentially you just invalidated that section of your argument. Struck down by the High Court means that part will either be removed entirely or simply not enforced/enacted which means there is no extra cost associated with that.

Also, most everything you discussed in your point is pure speculation, often by extremely biased sources who have their own agenda. That is part of the overall problem however, both sides have experts that attest that the other side is wrong rather than trying to figure out how this will actually affect the normal American citizen.

Congress needs to get off it's rear and actually do something useful. It pains me to see them practically shut down the government (multiple times in two years) over their useless bickering WHILE THEY STILL GET PAID TO DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

[DarkLink]

You do realize that only one part (albeit an important part) of the Affordable Healthcare Act was ruled to be a tax?

Yes.



Also, you can't use the forced expansion as an example of how the Affordable Healthcare Act would cause excess government expenditures and in the next sentence state that it was struck down. Essentially you just invalidated that section of your argument. Struck down by the High Court means that part will either be removed entirely or simply not enforced/enacted which means there is no extra cost associated with that.

Well, the original point of this thread was to inform people a little about the debate surrounding Obamacare. This was relevant, even if it didn't serve to emphasis a particular agenda, so I included it.



Also, most everything you discussed in your point is pure speculation, often by extremely biased sources who have their own agenda. That is part of the overall problem however, both sides have experts that attest that the other side is wrong rather than trying to figure out how this will actually affect the normal American citizen.

That's actually pretty much my point. I don't know what Obamacare is going to do, but there are some things that might result from it that are fairly likely and would be very bad for this country. Extensive uncertainty and the distinct possibility of failure, mixed with the fact that we have an economic crisis that Obama and Congress should be focusing on instead are precisely the reason that I don't like Obamacare.

In a few years, if we've seen a decent recovery, then introduce Obamacare and overhaul our healthcare system. But right now, Obamacare is one more ball we're trying to juggle when we're already juggling a half dozen running chainsaws that are also on fire.



Congress needs to get off it's rear and actually do something useful. It pains me to see them practically shut down the government (multiple times in two years) over their useless bickering WHILE THEY STILL GET PAID TO DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Exactly. Lowest approval rating of any Congress in recorded history. And it's not just the federal government. I live in California, and we're basically in the same situation, just a few years down the road. Did you know just a few years ago we approved a high speed rail project that is utterly impractical, completely unaffordable, and offers no real benefit to California? And it's at a time when economic growth and public debt is such a huge problem that we've had three cities declare bankruptcy in the last year or so.

I look at California's government, and see a ticking time bomb until we go bankrupt like Greece did, and then I look at our federal government making many of the same mistakes.

I'm just gonna move to Texas or something. They actually understand how to balance a budget and help business boost growth and employment.


How would any of what you claim (which is not accurate, but sounds more like Fox News talking points) not have been remedied by regulation on premiums to insurers and an affordable public option? Which is exactly what I claimed was the problem in my original post.

Well, my source was a couple of articles on Forbes and factcheck.org, which I mentioned specifically, and both of which you can probably agree are more reliable than Fox.

There's a great degree of uncertainty, because the law changes virtually all of America's healthcare programs one way or another. Nothing any of us says is going to be particularly accurate, because we simply don't know for certain what will happen yet.

The points I've lined out are areas with which I have concerns. They are things that can go wrong with Obamacare, and drastically so, and these opinions are far from limited to random people on the internet and those crazy Republicans that no one can trust because of fox news. You might disagree with these concerns, but you could at least address why rather than just handwaving it as 'fox new nonsense'.



That sure is a considerable amount of his top donors in the health industry/insurance industry. Shocking that his committee would strike down the amendments that would create competition for the health care giants and help keep costs on the individual down.

Are we disagreeing about this being bad? Because I'm not disagreeing with this being bad. In fact, I think half of my complaints about Obamacare boil down to "they don't improve regulations as much as they should", and this is one of the reasons for it. In fact, in one of my previous posts I pointed out that drug companies were inflating the prices of rare drugs because they knew the government would subsidize the patient's treatment.



There are also exemptions for those unable to afford the penalty, so that isn't a huge issue, also, the IRS' hands are tied in collecting the penalty:

The middle class still has to pay, and they're the ones hurting a lot right now.



So it may turn out that the IRS will be suing those who fail to pay the tax for double the amount. But so far, the IRS has not spelled out exactly how it will enforce the new penalty with the limited power the law gives it."

So either the IRS, already overworked due to our overly complex tax system, gets bogged down in a bunch of lawsuits, or people don't pay the tax at all? Doesn't sound like a great plan to me.

[Capt Forsythe]

The points I've lined out are areas with which I have concerns. They are things that can go wrong with Obamacare, and drastically so, and these opinions are far from limited to random people on the internet and those crazy Republicans that no one can trust because of fox news. You might disagree with these concerns, but you could at least address why rather than just handwaving it as 'fox new nonsense'.


Provide me some substance to back up your conjectures and then I can do that.


"they don't improve regulations as much as they should"

Complete agreement here.



The middle class still has to pay, and they're the ones hurting a lot right now.
I don't agree, even without the public option unless you make 200k+ the AHCA is a net gain for vast majority of the middle class.


So either the IRS, already overworked due to our overly complex tax system, gets bogged down in a bunch of lawsuits, or people don't pay the tax at all? Doesn't sound like a great plan to me

I didn't say that it was ideal or anything, just pointing out that the media hype about the penalty for not getting insurance is completely overblown.

[DarkLink]

Provide me some substance to back up your conjectures and then I can do that.


I kinda did, for most of the points I listed earlier. Not exactly in depth by any means, but I'm not an economist either so you can take what you get;).